Sunflowers!

Sunflowers in December? I know, it doesn't make much sense to write about sunflowers in December--I ought to be writing about Italian Christmas traditions or how excited I am to see the Christkindlmarkt in my mother's birthplace, Munich, next week, but here I am thinking about sunflowers... Why? Well, for one, I really wanted the background of this blog to be a blue sky meeting a field filled with bright yellow sunflowers. So I looked for far too long for a free image on google and on my friends' facebook accounts for one that fit the bill, but alas! The photo I was looking for doesn't exist yet. That's alright, though, because one of the things I need to do before I leave Italia is go to the sunflower fields that bloom right here in Toscana in late June...I promise to let you know when that happens.

But then I started thinking more about how it is actually perfect to think about sunflowers in December...I'm not sure about where you are, but here in Firenze it rained for about a month straight until just a couple of days ago when it stopped (praise the Lord!). Thinking about sunflowers really brightens up my day--and having them in the pretty white Vietri pitcher I bought at the market is even better... It's surprising just how much of a difference something like fresh flowers makes, especially in winter. It's like being reminded of how there is a light in this world that will never be extinguished (check out John 1:1-5 to see what I'm talking about). In the long, dark days of winter, we can all benefit from that reality!

But of course, I couldn't just think about how great sunflowers are and how they're my absolute favorite (I talk about them all the time...). No, no, no. Instead of studying for my GMAT which is in two days, doing the dishes before I leave for Roma tomorrow, or even going to bed like I should, I decided to look up information on sunflowers. Here's something I didn't know about them: "The florets within the sunflower's cluster are arranged in a spiral pattern. Typically each floret is oriented toward the next by approximately the golden angle, 137.5°, producing a pattern of interconnecting spiralswhere the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. " (thanks to wikipedia.en for the info and quote!). Who knew? Obviously whoever wrote the article did, and probably many of you, too.

But I'll leave you with that for this evening--there's so much more to share about sunflowers, the Light of the World, and oh so much more, but I'll save some for another time....